We have had our eye on the tiling adventures of Dutch rider Elmar Hogenboom as he sits in a very impressive 1st place in the Explorer Max Cluster Span leaderboard. It is thanks to Elmar this VeloViewer leaderboard was created after his request to Ben.
To achieve this amazing feat Elmar developed a Max Cluster spanning from Germany’s North Baltic coast down to Alicante (half way down Spain’s East Coast).
We checked in with Elmar to find out about his impressive position, how he hit his goals, and the challenges along the way.
Can you tell us what sparked your passion for cycling?
From a young age, I had an adventurous streak. On my 11-kilometre bike ride to high school, I would often take different routes, venturing down little alleys I hadn’t explored before. My first overnight bike trip was with my brother when I was 12 and he was 14. We packed our newspaper bags with a cheap tent and a toothbrush and cycled to a family holiday destination — 100 kilometres over two days. Halfway, we asked a farmer if we could pitch our tent in his yard. It was the early nineties, and my parents were perfectly fine with it.
Later in life, I cycled in more than 50 countries across all continents — from the Himalayas to the Andes, and from Canada to Japan. For me, cycling was a way to visit faraway places; it was mostly about travelling. At home, I didn’t cycle all that much.
In my early thirties, I rediscovered the road bike. I had moved to Amsterdam and wanted to explore the surroundings more, but my sluggish touring bike just wasn’t cutting it. After recovering from a serious accident in 2015, I began cycling more and more. During a BRM ride, I met Aymar van Schemerwoude in his velomobile and started following him on Strava. He did long rides and kept posting about “tiles.” I asked what that meant — and that was it, I was hooked. It turned out to be the perfect combination of my love for cycling, exploring new places, maps, and statistics.
At first, it was a gradual progression: collecting local tiles and going on longer rides to add more. Then Covid came along, creating the ideal conditions to rent a cottage somewhere for a week or two. My girlfriend Anne and I would work during the day and go cycling for a few hours after work, quickly filling in gaps on the map. From then on, things escalated quickly.
Was your initial ‘filling in gaps’ driven by Max Square or Max Cluster, or was it purely visiting places you hadn’t been to before, with the numbers as a by-product?
Living in Amsterdam, close to the North Sea and a large inland lake, the square was never my focus. At the moment, my square is a mere 59, small for a cluster of just over 37,000 tiles. When I open the heatmap, my attention always goes to faraway places and ways to explore and expand my cluster.
The tiles needed to expand my square are relatively close, near the German border. I often think “I’ll get there someday,” and then I don’t. The good thing is: those tiles aren’t going anywhere. I used to drive to tiling rides more, but grew a bit tired of that. Now I prefer going somewhere to work for a week and explore a new area further away. Or, just recently, taking a train to Berlin to cycle to Munich with Anne.
Given your amazing Max Cluster), at what point did you commit to making it so far-reaching?
I always have ideas to expand my cluster. Having cycled to Portugal in 2012, my first long trip recorded on Strava, Portugal was an obvious first thought. ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to make a cluster all the way south?” It seemed ludicrous when I started tiling, but slowly the idea took hold. With a week in northern France, two weeks in the middle, two weeks around Barcelona, and two months in Seville during the tail end of the Covid pandemic, it suddenly looked achievable. In the end, all you really need is enough time to make it happen. I don’t see it as a big athletic achievement, but as a cool idea and a fun project. We don’t have kids and were both working freelance until 2024, so that freedom made the idea realistic. After quitting my last freelance job and spending six weeks with Anne and our senior dog Bailey in Xátiva, near the Costa Blanca, I decided to take some more time and cycle back home, to connect my Spanish cluster to my main one.
By then, that already reached halfway through France, between Dijon and Lyon, and I had two clusters of about 1,000 tiles each on the Costa Blanca and around Barcelona. Connecting them in about a month felt doable.
What were the main challenges, and was it all enjoyable?
The main challenge was staying healthy and keeping my bike in good order. Some individual tiles were tricky, but mostly they were puzzles rather than real challenges. The nicest puzzle was crossing the Pyrenees between Spain and France. There’s a main road over the mountains, but the adjacent tiles were up some very steep, forested slopes. I collected those by leaving my panniers in the hotel in the morning. With an extra 10 kilos, the 15% gradients and rough descents would have been a lot harder. Fun fact: I saw Jürgen Knupe doing this stretch some weeks ago. He’s clearly set his sights on clustering into Spain as well!
It wasn’t always enjoyable. After five weeks, I found myself in northern France in mid-April. It was 3 degrees, raining a lot, and my mother had just been admitted to the hospital with pneumonia. Being far away, cold, wet and exhausted was the lowest point of the trip. That evening, I found a can of Amsterdam Navigator beer in the supermarket. That helped, and, more importantly, my mum recovered.
Do you have plans to extend the Cluster further down through Spain (to Portugal perhaps?) or further to the North/East?
I have plenty of ideas for next year’s clustering expeditions, but no definitive plans yet. There’s a month of tiling separating my Portuguese cluster from my main one, a week to connect Poland via Berlin and a long weekend to connect Denmark. I’m also entertaining the idea of clustering into central Europe from Munich, where many countries are close together. And if I’m really dreaming, reaching Istanbul and connecting two continents would be something special.
Have any of the recently introduced features (Max Cluster Span, Connected tiles (inc span), max column/row) piqued your exploration interest?
Definitely. I especially love the Max Cluster Span. When I finished my big trip, I suspected I had the largest span, but couldn’t be sure. I mentioned the idea to Ben, and he implemented (and improved) it very quickly.
I also like the longest row and column as side projects. They’re great for filling small gaps and seeing quick progress. Still, my personal top three remain number of tiles, cluster size and Max Square.
Is Anne also bitten by the Exploring bug or does she shake her head as you describe your next set of plans for tile ticking?
A bit of both. In our early years together, she joined me on many tiling rides, jumping fences and ditches alongside me. After Covid, she started racing competitively, and after adopting Bailey in 2022, long day trips became less feasible.
But the tiles aren’t going anywhere. There’s no rush. When Anne’s racing days are over, I’m sure we’ll get back into it together.
Is there a tile with a special story behind you’d like to tell us about?
Plenty, but I’ll limit myself to one. In December 2020, on a freezing Wednesday morning, I set out for a long day of riding. Just before dusk, I reached the massive BASF chemical factory in the southwest of The Netherland, which completely fills a tile. Just as I was about to give up, an unguarded gate opened to let a freight train through.
Under cover of incoming darkness, mist, and smoke from the chimneys, I slipped inside, bagged the tile, and hurried back. At the gate, the train was still passing, it was a long one. I imagined guards chasing me while I clumsily tried to escape on my cleats, and pictured myself dissolving in a chemical basin, never to be seen again.
Luckily, the train stopped halfway, allowing me to climb over one of the tank wagons and finish the ride. Later, I learned that some people ‘visited’ the tile by poking their GPS through the fence and waiting for a signal error to do the job for them.
If you have tiling achievements or plans for 2026 you wish to share within the VV Community, get in touch at veloviewer@gmail.com and you could win a VV casquette for your time.